Their manager, Steve Coppell, would have demanded a high-tempo game from the start against the best side in the country and he would have known it would be the only way Reading could play against Chelsea and hope to get a result.

Because Stephen Hunt was about to make his first Premiership start, he would have been more fired up than most. It was very early when he went for a ball that Cech was always favourite to collect. It was a clumsy challenge, made worse because it was a wet, skiddy surface and the ball was not really there to be won.

I have great admiration for Coppell, not just because of his abilities as a manager but because of the honesty and integrity he brings to the game. If Steve says he is 100 per cent certain that there was no malicious intent on Hunt's part, it is good enough for me. The injury was caused by a basic lack of judgment rather than anything more sinister. Jose Mourinho has compared the challenge to Ben Thatcher's elbowing of Pedro Mendes at Manchester City but, for me, it is a completely false comparison.

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The Thatcher incident was so unacceptable because it was pre-meditated; you could have had 100 repetitions of the clash between Hunt and Cech and not seen the Chelsea goalkeeper being carried off with a depressed fracture of the skull.

The clash with Ibrahima Sonko that led to Cech's replacement, Carlo Cudicini, being carried off was more straightforward. Twenty years ago, it would never have happened. Then, goalkeepers operated on the Julius Caesar principle. They came, they saw, they took everyone out, including sometimes their own defenders. The Italian is not the biggest of goalkeepers and nor is he the best at coming for crosses. Sonko's was a totally legitimate challenge and Cudicini was not as strong as he might have been.

The sort of frantic, high-tempo game Reading attacked them with is something Chelsea will have to get used to. When teams dominate like Liverpool did in the Eighties and Manchester United in the Nineties, this is how the lesser teams try to come at you. And the longer you dominate, the harder they will generally come because they know that if they can get a result against a side such as Chelsea, the rush of confidence that will bring could sustain them through the next five matches. From experience, I know you usually have to fight it out for about 60 minutes, when your superior quality should take over.

Chelsea, a bigger, stronger side, are better equipped to deal with these tactics than Arsenal, whose abysmal record in the North-West last season, when they lost six times to sides such as Everton, Bolton and Blackburn, shows how vulnerable they can be to this sort of game. Chelsea's greatest enemy in times like these is complacency. It is the one thing Sir Alex Ferguson was always on his guard against because, if unchecked, it can spread like wildfire.

However, it is so much harder to combat than it was 20 years ago because then, in a time when bonuses were so important, you had to win to be sure of getting your money. Now, there is no real financial motivation to perform.

Coppell would have fancied his chances all the more because so many of Chelsea's players had been on international duty. They would have reported back on Friday, most of them having played two matches, and, under the circumstances, there was not a lot Mourinho could have said or done to prepare them to face a side such as Reading, who have begun the season at a frenetic pace.

On Wednesday, Chelsea will meet a side who in no way think themselves inferior. There will be plenty of heated rhetoric before Barcelona come to Stamford Bridge but, if I can offer Chelsea some advice, the best way to deal with this kind of talk is to keep their mouths shut and concentrate on finding the fluency they displayed last season.

In Chelsea's position, you cannot afford distractions and that is what the hype surrounding their games with Barcelona have been.

At Anfield under Bob Paisley, we were taught to say the right thing because then Liverpool knew the time to talk was when it was all done and you had a trophy in your hands.